From Communal Video Apps to Dating App-Inspired Portraits

Considering the humble origins of social media, the May 2017 social media trends show just how different contemporary platforms are from their predecessors. In the early days of social media, the majority of activity consisted of text exchanges — if people included any images at all, it would be a single image to make up their profile picture. Today, image-centric platforms dominate the social media landscape, and that shows in the social media trends for the coming month.

Both Facebook and Snapchat are looking for ways to expand beyond even image sharing alone. Snapchat has created an AR video filter in the style of its beloved and massively popular picture filters, and Facebook recently announced a VR hangout space where virtual avatars can meet and converse.